Until Rick Pitino took charge of the program in 2023, St. John\u2019s basketball in this century was defined by their repeated failed efforts to live up to the standard set by Lou Carnesecca. Every successive head coach fizzled out due to incompatibility or incompetence, any glimmer of a turnaround was a mirage, and one could bank on an uneventful March every year for the Johnnies.<\/p>\n
Any of the Red Storm\u2019s many frustrating losses could tell the tale of their struggle to become a winning program again, but look no further than their matchup with Kansas back in December of 2021. It was the first-ever college basketball game at the newly-opened UBS Arena in Belmont Park, and the Johnnies wanted to plant their flag and make a statement against one of the sport\u2019s elite. Although it was arguably the team\u2019s most important non-conference battle in a few years, only 9,000 fans showed up, with all but one of the upper bowl stands curtained off.<\/p>\n
What happened on the court explained why there was little interest in the program at the time, even when the best came to town. The blue-blood that would go on to win that season\u2019s National Championship played like it, while the shipwrecked program trying to cling onto any notion of relevance couldn\u2019t inspire their supporters.<\/p>\n
The Johnnies chased the Jayhawks for almost the entire game, failing to keep pace with their high-octane scoring. Joel Soriano\u2019s jumper in the opening minute stood as the only time they led that night. NBA first-round draft pick Christian Braun had the Red Storm defense on a string, scoring a career-high 31 points in the win. Fellow future pro Julian Champagnie made a valiant effort to keep St. John\u2019s in close quarters, cutting the Jayhawks\u2019 lead to three points midway through the second half. However, Mike Anderson inexplicably subbed out Champagnie when his team was within striking distance, and the visitors immediately turned it into a laugher by going on an 18-2 run and waltzed out of New York with a 95-75 win<\/a>.<\/p>\n There was no shame in losing to the eventual champions, but it showed how far St. John\u2019s needed to go to get where they wanted. Two seasons later, the hard work of righting the ship began for Pitino. One by one, each negative connotation about St. John\u2019s basketball was erased. Thirty-win seasons, Big East double championships, top-ten rankings, and ever-elusive NCAA Tournament wins were all achieved in recent years. Yet, like an annoying pimple between their eyebrows that wouldn\u2019t go away, that second weekend slump remained. Falling to 10-seed Arkansas in last season\u2019s Big Dance spoiled the feel-good buzz around the program, and again stoked the narrative that the Johnnies were unserious.<\/p>\n If that game at UBS Arena was emblematic of the Red Storm\u2019s seemingly never-ending mediocrity, their next meeting four and a half years later was a referendum on the end of that futility. When the Johnnies battled the Jayhawks in the NCAA Tournament, they were the aggressors for most of the night. When they faced a sure-fire NBA talent in Darryn Peterson, they did not let him walk over them and held him to 5-of-15 shooting. When Kansas pushed back and forced St. John\u2019s to make the winning play, they had Dylan Darling call his own number<\/a> despite not making a single bucket at that point, creating an instant \u201cwhere were you\u201d moment that fans, students, and alumni can recall for decades in the future.<\/p>\n Darling\u2019s layup at the buzzer in Sunday\u2019s Second Round contest marked the end of 27 years of frustration, taunts, and the pervasive idea that St. John\u2019s could never again be a featured player in college basketball. Of course, it is not the ultimate accomplishment of winning a national title, but reaching a Sweet Sixteen is a benchmark of a successful season, no matter what a team\u2019s expectations are. That kind of feat seemed unattainable for a St. John\u2019s program that struggled to put together consecutive winning seasons not so long ago, let alone reach the NCAA Tournament and win games in it.<\/p>\n The fifteen players who donned the red and white this season no longer have to live with the sins of the program\u2019s past; they are no longer defined by tournament droughts that began before they were born, and the name on the front of their jerseys carries a meaning that longtime fans never thought would exist again. No matter what happens this Friday against Duke or beyond that, what St. John\u2019s basketball represents has changed for the better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Until Rick Pitino took charge of the program in 2023, St. John\u2019s basketball in this century was defined…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":677223,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3723],"tags":[7,217,231,772,1544,15101],"class_list":{"0":"post-677222","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-college-basketball","10":"tag-ncaa","11":"tag-ncaa-basketball","12":"tag-ncaab","13":"tag-st-johns-red-storm-mens-basketball"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116286625133673942","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=677222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677222\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/677223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=677222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=677222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=677222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}